Recover from accidental Ctrl-U
You can accidentally lose text that you're typing in – text that you can't recover with undo. This tip allows you to recover your lost text, and to avoid future problems with a mapping. In insert mode, pressing Ctrl-u deletes text you've typed in the current line, and Ctrl-w deletes the word before the cursor. You can't undo these deletions. However, what you've typed is still in the .' register. You can confirm that (after pressing Esc to return to normal mode) with the command :reg which will list all registers (or just :reg . to display the '. register). You may be able to copy the missing text from the register display, for example, with the mouse. Unfortunately, simply pasting the . register won't help because it will repeat the Ctrl-u or Ctrl-w and will delete the text again. However, you can use another register (register a in the following): :let @a = @. "aP The above will paste all the text you last inserted, including what was accidentally deleted. To avoid the problem in the future, put the following in your vimrc: inoremap u inoremap u Now Ctrl-u and Ctrl-w will work as before, but they first use Ctrl-g u to start a new change, as far as undo is concerned. For example, in insert mode, you might type several lines then accidentally press Ctrl-u which deletes the last line. If you have used the above mapping, you can press Esc to return to normal mode, then u to undo, which will recover the last line. The first mapping (for ) is now included by default in the vimrc_example.vim distributed with Vim. Explanation Generally, when you insert text (after an i or o or other similar command) you make a single modification to the file that forms one undo block. Pressing Ctrl-u or Ctrl-w while in insert mode is just part of that single modification. After pressing Esc to return to Normal mode, if you press u you will undo all your typing. Therefore, you have lost text deleted with Ctrl-u or Ctrl-w. However, some insert-mode commands break the undo block so the insertion consists of more than a single modification. One of those commands is Ctrl-g u. References * Insert mode: deletes text entered in the current line. * Insert mode: deletes word before cursor. * Insert mode: u starts a new change. * Insert mode: Commands which start a new change. Comments The following allows you to paste all of "., while using backspace to delete the Ctrl-u at the end (assuming you accidentally typed Ctrl-u): :put ='.' The above command puts the '...' string following the expression register =. Using Ctrl-r twice inserts text from the following register literally. * * ---- Here are a few maps that'll let you use Ctrl-W to delete the previous word, Ctrl-U to delete a line, and Ctrl-Y to paste what you've deleted back, all while remaining in insert mode: inoremap db inoremap d0 inoremap " ----